by Landon Beach
She was quick to hug him, but in no rush to let go. Thank God.
He took the gesture as part forgiveness, although he had nothing to be forgiven for from her. It was forgiveness from Marcy Hart that he needed but would never get. When he had shown up at Brad’s house during the winter, three years after disappearing from the hike, he had used his brother’s laptop to search for her obituary. A small part of himself held out hope that a miracle had occurred and that she was still alive. She was not. Marcy Hart had passed away two weeks after watching her beloved Iowa Hawkeyes play. Conrad had closed the door to Brad’s guest room and wept.
Stansie eased herself away and gave a sympathetic look to his red eyes. She touched his face. “And now we have a chance to make things right for at least ourselves. I hurt people too. That’s the way it goes in life, I suppose. We hurt people, we leave them, and then we never speak to them again. Months, years later, they enter our minds when we don’t have a minute to think of something else, and we remember. We think about reaching out, but know it would be too out of place. Right now, you could contact Marcy’s parents, but what good would it do for them? It might help you feel better, but then, once you had realized that you had hurt them again, you’d feel even worse.” She grasped his elbow. “This is why it isn’t always the right answer to atone with contact. Sometimes forgiveness is better at a distance.”
He wiped his eyes with the bottom of his t-shirt and drank from his water bottle as if replenishing his tear supply for the next time he was moved by recalling another mistake he had made.
“That’s all I can do at this point,” he said. “Try to live a better life.”
They packed up and started hiking again.
23
St. Clair Shores, Michigan
2 Days Ago…
FBI Special Agent Patrick Bruno reclined in his home office’s leather chair. It was after nine in the evening, and a day had passed since his last meeting in Nolan’s office. Three feet away, his wife, Tara, sat on the carpeted floor and leaned back against one of the bookshelves that lined the wall opposite the leather chair. Through the office’s open window, he heard the sound of a car starting up and then driving off.
“And so that’s everything I can tell you about what has happened and what I’ll be doing for the next few years,” Patrick said.
It was the first alone time they had had together over the past few days. Once things blew up downtown, he had spent the majority of his time at the office with Nolan. A meeting with Nineteen was being set up, but it would be a few weeks out, hopefully enough time for the mob hit and civilian girl fatality to leave the front page. Tara had not asked any questions about what he had presented to her. To him, she seemed all at once calm, realizing the demands of his work, but also distant as if whatever Patrick did over the next few years would do little to make life safer and better for the average citizen.
She crossed her legs and rubbed the toes of her right foot up and down her left foot, starting at the ankle, working them up to just beneath the toes, and then a retreat to the ankle. “I know you can’t tell me what Nolan is turning over to you, but does he seem like a decent guy?”
Nolan had spent most of the past twenty-four hours doing exactly what he had told Patrick he would be doing: dealing with the media—issuing tough statements about justice, organizing a task force that wouldn’t probably come together for at least another few days because of the bureaucratic nature of the District Attorney’s office and the ineptitude of FBI Headquarters or so Nolan said. Patrick had to admit, however, that Nolan had been a magician with the press at the impromptu conference, using the perfect balance of charm and tough talk to satiate the reporters’ thirst for information. He hadn’t realized how quick Nolan was with misdirection or that his wit was sharp and calculated enough to both soothe and cut at the same time until he had heard Nolan perform live without a script. If it had been him giving the briefing…
And then there was the part that Patrick didn’t like. Nolan’s confidential calls with Nineteen. Why wasn’t Patrick in on them? Nolan assured him that he would be soon, but that this was a delicate situation to maneuver and that Nolan had approval from headquarters to, and he quoted, “leverage his extraordinary and delicate relationship with Nineteen to find out what happened and what the plan was to start collecting information now that the FBI had a Godfather as an informer.” Patrick had accepted this but hadn’t stopped his review of Nolan’s 302s and 209s.
Everything seemed to be in order, and he was starting to grasp the evolution of the relationship and the value of the information that Nineteen was producing. Then, just this afternoon, he had remembered what Nolan had said yesterday, “You never get used to seeing an innocent life taken.” And it was not so much the words that stuck out to him but the way that Nolan had lost his pompous demeanor about how he would handle the media and retreated inside himself—like a tortoise who had stuck his head out too far from the safety of his shell. This had prompted Patrick to go down the hallway to the workroom, where he began to dig through the database of innocent people killed by suspected mob action during the past twenty years. About to refill his coffee cup for the fourth time, he stopped on an article in the Detroit Free Press from 2007. A hit crew had apparently assassinated a capo at a downtown apartment complex. Forty-seven-year-old Vincent Trentino had been gunned down by four men in the hallway outside of his second-floor apartment on the morning of December 12th. Trentino had been wearing a Santa Claus outfit and had a bag full of presents that he was going to deliver to a hospital down the street. The article said that Trentino was one of The Association’s top cocaine dealers and had previously served two prison sentences for possession and racketeering. He was survived by his wife and three young boys.
The tragedy, however, was that nine-year-old Debbie Archer, who lived in the adjacent apartment, had been struck and killed by a stray bullet. Patrick had checked the dates. Yes, Nolan was running Nineteen at the time, along with Carr. He went back and looked at the 302s and 209s from October 2006 to February 2007. There was no mention of Debbie Archer in any of the memos. Furthermore, the only mention of the incident was in a January 209, where Nolan had written, “Spoke to Nineteen about the Trentino death. Nineteen assures me that he and The Association knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with it. Nineteen suspects east side gang hit because Trentino had recently raised the price on all products.” He searched the database and did not find any east side gang murders reported, and also the four assailants who had killed Vincent Trentino were never caught.
These items had raised some questions in Patrick’s mind. Why didn’t Nolan account for the civilian casualty in the 209? Did he lean on Nineteen to try and find out what had happened? There had to have been some retribution. What became of the east side gang? Why hadn’t that been mentioned? After spending another few hours going through the records, he had found no civilian death that was similar to nine-year-old Debbie Archer’s. Was this why Nolan had lost it at the downtown site the other day? He intended to get the answers to all of these questions.
“He’s been a good source of information,” Patrick said. “Had a lot of experience.”
“Do you trust him?”
Mostly, but he needed to sit down and talk with him tomorrow. “Yeah, I do,” he said.
She closed her eyes and started to breathe—in for eight counts, hold for four, and then out for eight more. For a minute, it was like he had a noise machine plugged in to protect a private meeting. They hadn’t connected at all this week, emotionally or physically. Would she respond if he made his way across the floor and started in? Probably not. A year into their marriage, she had told him, “Look, I’m a woman, Patrick. The puppy love and infatuation stage where eye contact would lead to disrobing and starting right in left us a while back. You’ve gotta warm me up first. Massage my shoulders, kiss my cheek, my forehead, my neck, then my lips. Rub on me, hold me. Talk nicely to me. Give me attention. Then, when I’m warmed up, proceed
.” When he listened to this, it happened. When he didn’t, it rarely did.
He dropped to the carpet and crawled over beside her. Her eyes opened. “Hey there,” she said.
He began rubbing her shin bone, working his way up to her thigh. Then, he gave her arm a kiss. “The boys are in bed, right?”
Her cell phone rang.
“Leave it,” he said, rubbing her shoulders now.
But her eyes had apparently caught sight of the caller, and she said, “It’s Liz.” She looked over at him, gave a smile that said she was sorry—he hated those—and gave his leg a few quick pats. “I gotta take this. We’ll pick back up in a minute.”
Without giving him time to reply, she hopped up and left the room.
He rolled over onto his back and put his feet up on the ottoman. His lower back felt instant relief as he yawned and stretched his arms toward the ceiling. It was a good start. She’d be back, and they would finally get to connect. Everything was—
His wife’s scream from the hallway jolted him upright, and he was at the office doorway in seconds. She was running down the hall toward him, tears streaming out of her eyes, wails leaving her mouth about every other bound.
“What in the hell is it?” he said.
She ran to his open arms and then sobbed into his shoulder. The cell phone dropped to the carpet.
He held her and then gently pulled her away, attempting to make eye contact. She was now hyperventilating.
“Calm down, sweetie. Calm down,” he said, rubbing her back.
A door on the far end of the hallway creaked open, and his youngest poked his head out. “Daddy, what was that?”
In a calming voice, Patrick said, “Mommy just banged her foot on the banister again, and it really hurts. Sorry it scared you, buddy. Just head back to bed, and I’ll check on you in a minute.”
The little boy disappeared back into his room and shut the door.
He looked back down at Tara. “What is it, honey?”
“D-DD-DDUH-Dari,” she finally got out. “Shhhh-shhhee-sheee’s dead. Fffound her three miles from the detention center. Needle on the grass next to her. Heroin overdose.”
He went to ask another question, but Tara just screamed into his shoulder, and he held her tightly against him. As she cried and cried, the shock turned to reality, and he found his insides empty and his throat with a lump that, when swallowed, would signify the start of his own hot tears.
His niece, fourteen, was gone forever.
24
Sterling State Park
2 Days Ago…
Conrad Cranston pulled the tent’s door zipper all the way down until it touched the second zipper near the tent floor. The inside smelled mostly of Stansie’s lotion and the campfire with just a hint of must left lingering from taking the rainfly off and airing the tent out earlier. He was still both emotionally and physically drained from the morning hike, but any burden he might have been carrying because of what he had revealed was gone. Hence, it was a different kind of tired that he felt, a good tired, and he projected that he was in for a night of deep sleep.
They had picked up dinner at a deli, showered, sat by the campfire for an hour and had smores, and were now in for the night. A small Coleman lantern hung from a loop of string woven into the highest point of the tent’s domed ceiling. Two forest green sleeping bags lay side by side, each with a bottle of water next to it.
He stood up but then squatted down and checked the zipper again. When he turned around, Stansie was stretched out on her sleeping bag. He took off his shirt and threw it onto his backpack on the far side of the tent.
“Ready?” he said.
“Ready.”
He switched on a flashlight and then turned off the Coleman lantern.
“You sore?” he asked while sitting down on his sleeping bag and rubbing his calves.
“A little,” she said. “Feels good, though.”
He rubbed each leg for another few seconds and then laid back. “Right on,” he said.
The beam was focused on the tent’s ceiling, and the light dissipated on the way down to the floor like the sea darkening the deeper one descended. He made a pair of rabbit ears with his fingers, got a brief giggle from Stansie, and then turned off the flashlight.
“So, no Florida and maybe no Green Bay. Where are we moving to?”
He’d forgotten that they hadn’t continued that part of their conversation earlier. He put his hands behind his head. Laughter drifted over from another campsite and then died down. “I was thinking the Upper Peninsula.”
“Isn’t that just as cold as Green Bay?”
“Close, but if we’re looking for peace and quiet, then the Upper Peninsula is where it’s at.”
“Never been there.”
If she had said this earlier, he would have shown his astonishment. But after finding out that she had never been hiking before, the news did not surprise him. “It’s a different way of life compared to the Lower Peninsula. People like to keep to themselves, but there are still strong communities. What I enjoy is the solitude—night and day from our life in Detroit.”
“Do you want to live on the water or inland?”
“Well, that depends on what I decide to do with my life,” he said. “After rehashing my time in Iowa today, I’m thinking that it might not be a bad idea for me to finish up my dissertation and become a professor. So, we’d have to initially move to a college town for me to finish up and then see where it takes us. There are some great schools up there. Good places to raise our little one.” He reached over with his right hand and slid it under the bottom of her t-shirt. He began rubbing her stomach. “What do you think? Can you handle living with a stuffy old man that has his nose in a history book?”
“I could warm to that,” she said.
For a moment, there was no talking, and they could hear crickets chirping. She took his hand. “If we have the chance, I think we should live on the water. Watching you dive off of South Bass Island was fun. I want to learn how to do it.”
“No problem. What about a boat?”
“Sure. Sail or power?”
“After our trip with Nico, I’m leaning sail.”
“Me too, but I also like the speed of a powerboat. Why not both?”
“I think a professor’s salary could handle one of those. Which reminds me, what are you planning on doing for work?”
“Maybe I could go back to school too?”
He gave her hand a squeeze and then put his hand back behind his head. “What would you study?”
“I don’t know. I graduated with a degree in communications. I hated it.”
“What are you interested in?”
“Well, I like to read, always have.” She gave a soft laugh. “I know, not much help. Let’s see...” A stiff wind blew against the tent’s nylon fabric, and the rainfly flapped like a sail that was luffing.
When the wind subsided, Conrad said, “Bet there are some big waves out on the lake right now.”
“Bigger than when we were on the sailboat?”
“Yeah. Sorry, you were saying what you might be interested in.”
“The truth is, I’ve never really considered it. If my family had its way, I’d have around three or four kids by now and be married to someone in The Association. But I didn’t want that life. Unfortunately, there was only one way I knew how to escape it.”
“Do you think your family will let you leave that easily?”
“Papa will be gone soon, and Ciro doesn’t want us around; he’ll get another gardener. My mamma will support my decision. We are simply leaving the life, not her. She will be welcome to come visit us, and we will promise to see her.”
And now the question he had been thinking about for as long as they had been living at her house came out. “Do you think anyone would travel to wherever we were living and try and...you know, off us or something?”
“If someone had wanted to kill me to get back at my father, then I was never an easier target th
an when I was on the streets. No one bothered then, and they won’t now. It’s sexist as hell, but the women and small children in the family are off-limits, even with vendettas. Ciro will be the real target.”
His breathing slowed, and he relaxed. Once he had found out what business Stansie’s family was in, he had thought about leaving that night. But he had realized that he was in no condition to make it on his own at that point, and so he had stayed around. He soon came to grasp that, for the most part, the mafia aspect of the Russos’ life was invisible. Business associates came and went. Business luncheons and meetings were held and adjourned. There were family dinners, family card parties, and even family movie nights. There were arguments and reconciliations, tears and laughter. It was not wise guys with machine guns patrolling the grounds, although he had seen some of the Don’s security consultants, and they scared him. However, the secrecy of the business they were taking care of right now reminded him that living with the Russos was not like living a normal life. Some of the stuff in the mobster movies had to be true, or the movies wouldn’t exist, right? And he did not want to be in his home office one day, grading term papers, when bullets starting whizzing through his house. He was not certain that Stansie was right. Even though she was a woman and would probably be left alone, and he was the most forgettable gardener on the planet. Still... “That’s what I thought,” he lied. “Just wanted to make sure that we would be left alone to do our own thing.”